religion

Bodily practices played an important role in medieval devotion, some particularly associated with female believers. One need only think of how devout women kissed manuscripts and rosaries, Beguines performed series of prostrations and genuflections, and nuns constructed own meditational processions through their convents. Some mystics are represented as engaging in more extreme bodily performances. For instance, according to her vita, thirteenth-century beguine Elizabeth of Spalbeek imitated Christ’s Passion in public, resulting in stigmata erupting on her body.    

Heidelberg Center for American Studies 15th Annual Spring Academy Conference

Heidelberg, Germany, 19-23 March, 2018

/Call for Papers/

The fifteenth HCA Spring Academy on American Culture, Geography, History, Literature, Politics & Religion will be held from March 19-23, 2018. The Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) invites applications for this annual one-week conference that provides twenty international Ph.D. students with the opportunity to present and discuss their Ph.D. projects.

The Vernacular Devotional Cultures Group is organizing the following four special sessions at the 53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo in May 2018. Please see below for full call details.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a completed Participant Information Form to the organizers of your selected session by 15 September 2017. Electronic submissions are preferred.

1. Mysticism and Literacy in the Devotio Moderna

Organizer: Barbara Zimbalist, University of Texas at El Paso

Dear Colleagues,

The topic of women in Buddhism spans a large geographical and historical expanse, beginning some 2500 years ago during the lifetime of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. Throughout the history of Buddhism, women—their status within the traditions, their contributions, and their myriad roles—have been a subject of attention and concern.  The present volume seeks to examine how women’s roles in Buddhism have changed over time, how the women’s ordination movement has developed in specific contexts, and how women have changed the landscape of Buddhism, both as practitioners (lay and monastic) and as scholars in the field.

(1) This issue will examine the changing landscape of women in Buddhism;

Jeana DelRosso, Leigh Eicke, and Ana Kothe seek contributions for the fourth volume in their “Unruly Catholic Women” series.  In this volume, we seek creative pieces by third-wave and fourth-wave feminists on Roman Catholicism, with an eye to the future of the Catholic Church.  Please submit autobiographical stories, fictional pieces, prose, or poems to anam.kothe@upr.edu by 15 October 2017, for consideration. All submissions must be in English.